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Category: vet

My brother Stanley surprised me this morning by announcing that he’d acquired a rabbit. Who’d have thought? I’m sure I have no recollection of Stan ever expressing the slightest bit of interest in any such thing. Then again, he’s always been predisposed to sudden flashes of inspiration, and I guess that’s what happened here. The rabbit’s name is Buster.

Naturally, I had few questions. What do rabbits eat? How do they behave? Are they playful? What’s at pet rabbit’s usual lifespan? All these questions and more, it turned out, were shared with me by Stan, but that’s wasn’t stopping him. He immediately jumped on the internet and reeled off a bunch of facts about rabbits, gleaned from a combination of discussion boards and the website of a random veterinary surgery in Bayside.

For starters, he told me, rabbits are herbivores – well, I could have told him that much. All kinds of plant matter makes up their natural diet, which can be simulated with a mix of vegetables and hay. Stan threw in that Buster seems particularly fond of leafy greens.

Next, Stan read out that rabbits are quite smart and enjoy logic-based toys involving things like boxes, parcels, draws and tubes, with food as a motivator. This was news to me, and made me begin to feel a fondness for Buster (beyond the obvious appeal of his adorable furry noggin). They also have particular behaviours that aren’t shared by cats and dogs, most of them with absurdly cute names like ‘binkying’ and ‘nose bonking’.

Starting to warm to the idea of a pet bunny, I asked Stan what the go is with pet desexing requirements in Bayside, specifically as they pertain to rabbits. That was where he got a bit stumped and said he’d need to ring to the council to find out.

He was pretty tight-lipped, too, about where he acquired Buster from. I’m not sure why he wouldn’t tell me. Who really knows with Stan? Fortunately, I do know that commitment is one of his strong suits, so Buster should be in for a pretty good life.

I’ve just been taken on quite the runaround. First, I got saddled with dogsitting my sister-in-law’s annoying little terrier, Tegan, while she jetted off on another impromptu trip. As someone who’s not a dog person, I’m the last resort, so she must have been desperate. The drama escalated pretty quickly from there.

After Kate dropped off Tegan, I took her for a walk along the beach – I’d been wanting some fresh air anyway. I let her off-leash and watched as she ran up a rocky outcrop. Trouble kicked in when she didn’t stop running at the top and proceeded to disappear over the other side. When she didn’t reappear, I went to investigate and discovered that it had been quite a drop for her. She seemed to have landed awkwardly, and was now unable to stand on one her front legs.

I carried her back to the car while quietly muttering expletives and frantically googling emergency vets in the Bayside area. When I finally tracked down an appointment, I was dismayed to learn that Tegan had fractured her leg. I was informed that orthopaedic surgery would be required, and assured that this was a relatively common procedure.

While we waited to complete the pre-operation paperwork, I noticed that Tegan seemed to be in relatively decent spirits. This made me giggle, so I gave her a scratch under the chin. She wagged her tail and licked me enthusiastically on the arm, despite her broken leg. Finally, in that pet surgery in Moorabbin, I felt a wave of goodwill towards Tegan that I hadn’t experienced before. I recognised that the frantic state I’d been in could be put down to concern for her wellbeing, and realised that I really did want her to have the best veterinary care available.

I’m not going to mention our ‘moment’ to Kate, though. If I do, she’ll be wanting me to dogsit every weekend, and I don’t think I could handle the drama.